Viktor cares very little about his appearance, other than ensuring that he presents a strong and fierce front. It's important for him to seem strong and in command, since any sign of weakness would mean somebody else could attempt to seize control of his social standing and threaten his position as the Alpha Male and the derzhat mast - the leader - of his criminal gang. He doesn't consider personal hygiene to be a priority and shuns showers and grooming unless he is made to do so. As far as clothing goes, it matters little to him what he wears, as long as he wears it with confidence and authority; he learned long ago to cast aside his pride in favour of doing whatever it takes to survive. For this reason, he wears the standard Team X uniform with little trouble, since at times in his past he's had to wear far worse.

PERSONALITY

Viktor is first and foremost a survivor. He'll do whatever it takes in order to stay alive and if that means lying, cheating, selling out a colleague or even murdering someone he considers a friend, then he won't hesitate. He has little regard for honour, morals and compassion, seeing them as luxuries belonging only to those who can afford them, and he regards anyone in possession of such qualities with utter contempt. The harsh environment of a Gulag-based criminal gang, a vory, has left him with little concern for anyone's wellbeing except his own. Women are beneath his notice unless he wants their bodies for sex, and if they won't willingly submit to him then he takes them by violence. He has also abused men, too, but although he has taken pleasure in such acts of violation, he doesn't regard this as making him homosexual; it's an accepted practice within the vory to punish traitors by forcing them to undergo sexual torture.

The feral is patriotic to a certain degree, although he is well-aware of the inherent flaws which existed within the Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation. He is proud of his heritage simply because it has made him what he is, and has given him the opportunity to rise to the top of the pile at the expense of so many others. He believes that his mutation makes him superior, and his national pride ties in with this arrogance, leading him to believe that he is simply better than anyone else.

PERSONAL HISTORY

Viktor Syn Otechestva was born in 1830 to Foma Sergeyevich and Anna Ivanovna in the countryside surrounding the growing town of Irkutsk, Siberia. The family was poor and lived in a single-roomed shack, barely scraping a living on the shores of Lake Baikal; his father was an alcoholic who spent most of what little they earned on vodka, often beating his mother in a drunken rage. Viktor's mutations then manifested themselves at a very young age, causing his father to turn his anger on his son. His mother, too, had little love for the child which she now viewed as a monster. On several occasions Viktor was left out in the snow in the hope that he would die, but his healing factor - as well as his strong animal instinct for survival - meant that he always returned alive.

However, his parents had pushed him too far. After one such occasion of being chained and left to die in the snow, Viktor managed to escape his restraints - having to chew through the muscles of his own arm in order to do so - and made his way back to the shack where his parents were huddling together against the cold; there he killed them, tearing out their throats and dragging their bodies outside to be eaten by wolves. It was at this point that Viktor decided to renounce his past and his family, and took on the surname of 'Syn Otechestva', meaning 'Son of the Fatherland', considering himself to be more loyal to the land itself than to the parents who raised him. He then abandoned his home and took to living wild along the shores of Lake Baikal before eventually drifting into Irkutsk, where he began a life of petty crime, stealing food and picking pockets to survive.

It wasn't long before Viktor's crimes began to become more and more serious. He took his first woman at the age of fifteen, forcing her to submit to him against her will; he left her for dead, not knowing that she still lived, and it didn't take long for the authorities to track down the boy with claws like a wild animal. Although he fought hard, downing several man before his defeat, Viktor was captured and thrown into a katorga, a hard labour camp, where he learned how to survive in the harshest of conditions before his release many years later.

During this time Russia was in a state of great upheaval and political unrest. It didn't take long before Viktor was caught up within the situation, and he became indoctrinated by the promises of the Soviet Communist Party, promising prosperity and success. Members of the up-and-coming Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, recognised Viktor's usefulness in achieving their goals, and won him over to their cause, using him as a front-line fighter and enforcer to help them in their rise to power. Having served his use as an attack dog, the Bolsheviks had no further use for him. After their ascent to power, Viktor was rounded up - along with the rest of their hired muscle - and herded off into the newly-established labour camps set up under their regime, known as Gulags.

It was here, within the unforgiving environment of the Gulag, that Viktor truly found his calling. He quickly earned the klikukha - the moniker - of Amur, the Siberian Tiger, due to his brutal and ruthless method of fighting with tooth and claw. There were several times when Viktor could have escaped the captivity of the labour camps, but the feral found that such a life actually suited him; he had food to sustain him, fights to keep him occupied, and plenty of victims to toy with, both male and female (although he would strenuously deny that he had any homosexual tendencies.) In fact, his life amongst the vory of the Gulag was so successful that he quickly rose to the position of derzhat mast, maintaining his authority with violence.

After having served out his twenty-year sentence, Viktor was released back into society to continue his life of crime. By this point he was well-known to the authorities but avoided re-arrest thanks to the careful greasing of many an official palm with bribes and tip-offs, selling out many of his former companions as enemies of the State in order to remain a free man himself.

In 1939, during the onset of the Winter War against Finland, the chance arose for Viktor to join the Red Army and become a member of Russia's military forces. Although he had a basic knowledge of firearms, it was during this time that he learned how to fight as part of a military unit and how to wield guns with some degree of skill. He remained a soldier throughout World War II, participating in the Battle of Moscow and the Siege of Stalingrad, and continued to serve as a member of the armed forces until his release in 1947. Unfortunately for Viktor it was considered that he had spent too much time in the company of Allied forces – mainly amongst French and British troops – and this could cause him to become a liability to the State. Once more the feral found himself sent to the labour camps, this time as a political prisoner rather than a common criminal.

He was sent to a Gulag near Magadan, Kolyma, in the far north-east of Siberia, a prison camp where the inmates were condemned to spend the remainder of their lives mining for gold, and he may well have spent the rest of his own long life here were it not for Stalin’s death in 1953 and the subsequent denunciation of the labour camps by Stalin’s successor, Nikita Kruschev. When the Gulags were formally dissolved in 1960, Viktor was once more released into society where he continued to live his life as a career criminal.

The next couple of decades saw Viktor re-establish himself as a crime-lord of no small standing, amassing wealth and a fearsome reputation as well as a dubious following of men and women working under his command. Things seemed to be going well for him until he made a foolish mistake in the choice of one of his female victims; unknown to Viktor, the woman was a daughter of a senior Party official, and when word spread of his crime he was hunted down and taken once more into captivity, just as he had been all those years ago in Irkutsk. Bribes were of little use against a man whose love for his daughter outweighed his need for money, and Viktor was incarcerated in the Lubyanka itself, within the very heart of Moscow.

This was the point at which Viktor was approached and offered a chance as a member of Team X. Like an animal in a cage he leapt at the opportunity to be free of his confinement; it mattered little to him that the team was based in the United States, for despite the history of hostility between the two countries, Viktor’s experiences have taught him to see the darkest and most disturbing aspects of life within the very depths of the supposedly-glorious Soviet Union and the Russian Federation, and he knows that corruption – and the opportunities which come with it – may be found anywhere. He is content for now to find his pleasure in drinking, rutting and killing whomever he is ordered to, but he secretly hopes to one day turn on his commanding officers and murder them all in order to make his escape.

RANDOM FACTS

Although Viktor's main weapons are his fangs and claws he also has an extensive knowledge of firearms and other weaponry gained mainly from his time served within the Red Army; his weapons of choice are the PPSh-41 Submachine Gun, the Mosin-Nagant M91/30 Rifle and the Tokarev TT-33 Pistol, as well as whatever variety of knives he can get his hands on.

Despite his healing factor, Viktor has managed to gain several tattoos, most of which are crudely-made and `were acquired during his time in the Gulag.

He has never had a long-term partner, preferring instead to take his pleasure with whatever woman catches his eye, as well as numerous visits to whore-houses from Volgograd to Vladivostok.

Viktor's mother tongue is Russian, and he can also speak near-fluent English, although this is with a heavy Russian accent. He can also speak and understand some French and German.